Protoplay

When creating and playing prototypes, I always expect the first pass to be awful. It's second play of the game, after all of the gross adjustments have been made, that determine if the game is worth moving forward on for me.

Anyway, in the last week, I've had a chance to playtest My Little Vineyard twice. And the second playtest was very successful in this manner. Many of the really awful things from the first playtest were resolved, and it really felt like progress had been made forward, as opposed to sideways.

Obviously, the game currently is in a print-n-play format of just a scoresheet, and everyone agrees now that it should be more than that. So porbably the next version will be something much more like an art project. But at least I feel like it's worth the pursuit. The Shipwreck game, while having merits, always seems to run sideways. And the (what seems like) 25 hours of mocking up a new set of parts for that just doesn't seem like a good use of time, at least until I get the hunger to re-visit it again.

Aside from the BGG link for My Little Vineyard given above, you can go to the sideboard link which has all of the most recent files. The BGG link is kinda slow in updates due to the "moderator must check all files" thing. In the end, this is a very good policy; just not that great for quick updates.